Wednesday, September 29, 2010

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- For the fourth straight year, the majority of Americans say they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. The 57% who now say this is a record high by one percentage point.

I'm surprised that the number of people who still trust the media remains that high. And I wonder if the media knows what "truth" means? Telling the truth and its consequences is an age old problem. Pilate asked "what is truth?" For the media, truth is a convenience that, like Pilate when he was threatened by the crowd, is easily discarded. Why should we expect the media to be any more courageous in defense of truth than a Roman governor with a legion at his back?

Monday, September 27, 2010

The Indians who built the pueblos are depicted as peace loving farmers who lived in harmony with nature and their neighbors.

In reality they may very well have been cannibals who committed genocide on their neighbors.

...in the early 90s, some Southwestern archaeologists began questioning this received wisdom. David Wilcox, an archaeologist at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff, hypothesized that the rulers of Chaco Canyon, a massive Ancestral Puebloan site, commanded a small army and demanded tribute from their southern neighbors, slaughtering any who didn’t comply. As evidence, Wilcox pointed to charnel pits excavated in dozens of Ancestral Puebloan sites dating to the late 10th and early 11th century C.E.: these pits looked like mass graves from a war zone.

At first most Southwestern archaeologists just shook their head and smiled at Wilcox’s ideas. But evidence of very nasty times in the ancient Southwest began to accumulate. Physical anthropologist Christy Turner, now a professor emeritus at Arizona State University, and others detected traces of extreme violence and cannibalism on human bones unearthed at 40 different Ancestral Puebloan sites. Such acts of cannibalism, Wilcox suggested, were political messages, deliberate desecration of the dead as a warning to others.

...

I find it interesting to think about the ways in which contemporary history contributes to prevailing archaeological hypotheses and interpretations. I personally think it’s very possible that some Ancestral Puebloan people were victims of ethnic cleansing. But would the archaeological community have taken this idea so seriously, had it not been for the intense media coverage of ethnic conflicts and cleansing in places like Bosnia, Rwanda and Sudan in recent years?

The vision of an agrarian people living in peaceful harmony with their neighbors was a constant theme of those who wished to promote the idea that pre-Columbian America was an Eden that was spoiled by greedy, polluted, disease ridden Europeans whose object was cultural genocide as a byproduct of a fatally corrupt Western culture. This picture says it all: a tearful “native American” – one with nature – crying for his lost Eden which was destroyed by the white man.

The picture of the Indian as victim.

In this case, the Indians were just a useful tool; a club with which to slime Western civilization. I would venture to say that few Indian tears were shed over the bodies and graves of their beaten foes. That is a characteristic almost uniquely found in the West by those who hate Western culture while living as its pampered, cossetted beneficiaries.

While they were telling us that the stimulus kept the economy from going "over the cliff" they may have driven the economy over the cliff deliberately.

U.S. President Barack Obama and his administration weakened the country’s economy by seeking to foster growth instead of paying down the federal debt, said Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “The Black Swan.”

“Obama did exactly the opposite of what should have been done,” Taleb said yesterday in Montreal in a speech as part of Canada’s Salon Speakers series. “He surrounded himself with people who exacerbated the problem. You have a person who has cancer and instead of removing the cancer, you give him tranquilizers. When you give tranquilizers to a cancer patient, they feel better but the cancer gets worse.”

Today, Taleb said, “total debt is higher than it was in 2008 and unemployment is worse.”

He blames the childlike faith in the ability to forecast the future:

Governments globally need to cut debt and avoid bailing out struggling companies because that’s the only way they can shield their economies from the negative consequences of erroneous budget forecasts, Taleb said.

...

“Today there is a dependency on people who have never been able to forecast anything,” Taleb said. “What kind of system is insulated from forecasting errors? A system where debts are low and companies are allowed to die young when they are fragile. Companies always end up dying one day anyway.”

The Obama administration has kept companies who should have died on life support by, in effect, bleeding the healthy sectors of the economy into economic anemia.

The reason that free economies perform better than socialist ones is that in free economies, failing business are allowed to die, making room for new, better businesses. In a socialist economy, central planners artificially prop up failing businesses and give stimulus to businesses that are either well connected politically or ones that are compatible with their political ideologies. These latter "hothouse plants" need constant support or they will fail in a free economy, leading to eternal subsidies and an anemic economy.

TEHRAN, Iran — A complex computer worm capable of seizing control of industrial plants has affected the personal computers of staff working at Iran's first nuclear power station weeks before the facility is to go online, the official news agency reported Sunday.

This is no more surprising that having a comedian testify at a congressional hearing.

"When we do, we should have in place a coordinated response that takes into account all the sensitivities related to the subject. The UN is a ready-made mechanism for such coordination.”

Professor Richard Crowther, an expert in space law and governance at the UK Space Agency and who leads British delegations to the UN on such matters, said: “Othman is absolutely the nearest thing we have to a ‘take me to your leader’ person.”

Reality has a habit of intruding on fantasy. And when the reality is Barack Hussein Obama (mmm, mmm, mmm) it's time to vote for a new realtiy.

“If the election was today the party would almost certainly lose the Governorships it holds in Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. It's also more than likely at this point to lose the Senate seats it has in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Indiana, miss out on a once promising pick up opportunity in Ohio, and quite possibly lose their seat in Illinois as well. And there are too many House seats the party could lose in the region to count,”

Wisconsin’s startling U.S. Senate race between Russ Feingold and Ron Johnson has transcended party politics and transformed into the national poster child for this country’s deep dissatisfaction with Congress, bloated government, reckless spending, redistributionist socialism, and the institutionalized ruling elite in Washington. From a wildly unpopular health care bill, to Washington’s blind eye to America’s immigration problem, to a pork-laden trillion dollar “stimulus” bill which was more like a sedative, the American voters that incumbents have not listened to are more than angry. They are revolting.

A recent Daily Kos public policy poll has the newcomer and political outsider, Johnson, far ahead of Feingold, 52 to 41. That an entrenched Democrat incumbent is trailing that badly in a state which Obama carried handily in 2008 is more than a bad sign for Democrats this fall. It’s an ominous warning to all members of Washington’s aristocracy. Similar phenomena are being experienced in races all over the country. From the primary victory of Christine O’Donnell in Delaware to Carl Paladino’s victory in New York, the same message to the political establishment is winning the day: the party in Washington is over.

America’s new revolution is not unlike the infamous 18th century French Revolution. During a period of political upheaval, the French monarchy which had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three short years as an out-of-touch French aristocracy crumpled and gave way to simple principles of citizenship and inalienable rights. Similarly, the entitlement and business-as-usual mentality in Washington is giving way to common sense and the easily-understood notion that Washington cannot spend money it doesn’t have for things we don’t need.

Our young president’s slow political execution is symbolic of the fate of France’s Louis XVI. Yet, both Michelle and Barack are planning visits to Wisconsin to support Feingold. That a president with soaring disapproval ratings and his wife — who has been compared to Marie Antoinette — would come to Wisconsin and stump for Feingold is clearly a sign of ruling class desperation. Feingold spokesman John Kraus said Feingold is excited about Michelle coming, and looked forward to her visit — a far cry from Obama’s Labor Day visit, when Feingold made himself invisible.

The conspicuous consumption by the noble class in the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette at Versailles continued despite the financial burden on the populace. The excessive consumption by the political elite and ruling class in Washington today is no less conspicuous. High unemployment plagued Louis XVI’s France like it plagues the Rust Belt of America, and as everyday Americans look to Washington and see the rock star, Kobe beef-eating, exorbitant vacationing lifestyles of the rich and elected, they are looking for heads to roll. And roll they will this November, starting with Russ Feingold.

...

Americans have had it with ruling class Washington elites whose self-serving votes in Congress are almost always calculated to preserve the gravy train public office provides. The Ivy League political thoroughbreds that make up Congress and the Washington machine no longer relate to or speak for the people who pay for their salaries, lavish vacations, political junkets, or high society dinners. The wealthiest county in America is not, as you might expect, King County, Washington — the home of Microsoft — or Harris County, Texas, near the home of several of the world’s largest oil companies.

Sadly, it is Loudoun County, Virginia, followed closely by Fairfax County, Virginia. Both surround Washington, D.C., and both have median household incomes of over $105,000 per year. In fact, six of the ten richest counties in America are near Washington, D.C., and are fueled by American tax dollars. The Washington elite are out of touch, and will soon be out of a job.

Democrat Rep. Allen Grayson is deranged. Daniel Webster is running against him. Replacing Grayson will go a long way toward removing moral monsters from Congress.

It was Grayson, readers may recall, who characterized "the Republican health care plan" as: "Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly." Grayson then apologized "to the dead and their families that we haven't voted sooner to end this holocaust [the absence of Obamacare] in America."

I'm thinking of the way Rush Limbaugh says he believes Obama is destroying the economy on purpose. It's all a devious plan. I find that very hard to believe myself. I assume some combination of ineptitude and conditions that are so bad that even the improvements look bad because we're not seeing how abysmal things would be without them.

I'm sure that Ann, who supported Obama during the election passed this off as mere political rhetoric. Two years into reality Ann, are you sure he didn't mean it? Are you sure he just meant that he would tinker around the edges to get the economy moving in the direction it had always moved on the free enterprise track? Are you really sure?

Catholics, Muslims and Liberals

A few years ago a scandal erupted involving the Catholic Church. It turns out that a number of Catholic priests had been abusing young boys. It did not happen just once and it appears that the church leadership, when they knew of it, had swept the rash of sex crimes under the rug.

The outcry was terrific, as well is should be. The Catholic Church should not be the home of pedophilia or homosexuality. Defenders of the Church said that these cases were isolated instances and the vast majority of the priests were good people. But that was not good enough. There were lawsuits, there were criminal trials and there were accusations that the Catholic Church is corrupt as an institution.

The Liberals in the press, overwhelmingly unchurched, demanded that the Catholic leadership do something to root out the pedophiles in their ranks. Some demanded that the Pope resign, but all agreed that simply finding and prosecuting the guilty was not enough. They demanded that that Catholic Church fix this problem. No prominent columnist apologized to Catholics for the accusations of widespread criminality that was – and still is – being cast at Catholic priests.

About 9 years ago a group of Arab Muslims killed about 3000 Americans in a devastating attack on the centers of American culture and political power. This was not an isolated attack. It was part of a pattern and followed a series of attacks against Americans overseas, and was followed by a series of attacks against not just Americans but against the Western world in general. All these attacks were made by Muslims.

Compare the reaction of the people in government and the press to the Catholic crimes and the Muslim crimes. Keep in mind that the crimes committed by Catholic priests were not committed in the name of Christ while the crimes committed by Muslims on Jihad were committed in the name of Allah.

We were told that this was not a problem with Islam but with a few radicals. When Catholic priests abused young boys it was said to reflect on Catholicism. When followers of Muhammad kill tens of thousands in his name, it is claimed that the killers are not "real" followers of Islam.

When anyone who expressed the thought that the problem may have had something to do Islam itself, or with its leadership, was deemed to be an Islamophobe, a bigot and a hater. Political figures who expressed the opinion that the problem had to do with the way Islam was being taught were demonized. They were actually prosecuted.

One prominent opinion writer for the NY Times even apologized to the Muslims for the American people expressing opposition to a Muslim mosque being built next to the site of the site that Muslim Jihad turned into a mass grave.

The theme in the press for the problem in the Catholic Church was that Catholics need to root out the criminal elements. The theme in the press for the problem in Islam is that there is no problem with Islam. If you say there is you are a bigot and a hater and Nicholas Kristoff and the rest of the Liberal community is ashamed of you.

The problem with pedophilia in the Catholic Church is ultimately something that can only be rooted out by the Catholics. The problem with Islam is a lot bigger. It involves not pedophilia, where a few people carry psychological scars for the rest of their lives. The problem with Islam is much more serious; it involves literal life and death for hundreds of thousand, perhaps millions. We are trying to deal with it militarily. But the real resolution of this problem, this global cancer, is this: if the ones bombing and killing in the name of Islam are really a small minority, the solution of the problem lies with the majority of Muslims putting stop to it. So far, the most prominent Muslim groups have denied there is a problem, it’s not their fault, they’re being unfairly blamed … and Liberals join them in their denial.

Quite a difference, wouldn’t you agree?

UPDATE: the Canadian press also tells us that there's no problem ... and if there's a problem, it's spiked.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

How many Malik Shabazzes are ther and which one is this one? Andrew Breitbart:

In May 2009, the Obama/Holder Justice Department dropped charges in a voter intimidation case against Malik Shabazz, a leader of the New Black Panther Party, despite having already won a summary judgment against him, and his New Black Panther Party colleagues King Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson who were video-taped outside polling place in Philadelphia intimidating voters as they arrived on election day, 2008. In July 2009, when Congress began looking into the matter, someone named Malik Shabazz visited the private residence at the White House.

When news of the visit was released under the auspices of transparency, the White House denied that the Malik Shabazz on the visitor’s log was the same Malik Shabazz involved in the New Black Panther voter intimidation case. According to Norm Eisen, special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform, the records contained “a few “false positives” – names that make you think of a well-known person, but are actually someone else.” He specifically cited Malik Shabazz as an example of one of these “false positives”.

As testimony is given, fewer and fewer people will take the word of the White House (Slogan:"Would we lie to you? ... in a heartbeat.") That is is just one of many Malik Shabazzes.

The Jewish-American advocacy group J Street, which bills itself as the dovish alternative to the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobby, has secretly received funding from billionaire George Soros despite previous denials that it accepted funds from the Hungarian-born financier and liberal political activist.

Tax forms obtained by The Washington Times reveal that Mr. Soros and his two children, Jonathan and Andrea Soros, contributed a total $245,000 to J Street from one Manhattan address in New York during the fiscal year from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009.

Making matters worse, Michael Goldfarb at The Weekly Standard notes that J Street may have been lying about their funding:

The Myth vs. Fact section of the J Street website makes clear that “George Soros very publicly stated his decision not to be engaged in J Street when it was launched — precisely out of fear that his involvement would be used against the organization.”

An just six months ago, Ben-Ami told Moment Magazine, “We got tagged as having his support, without the benefit of actually getting funded!”

But wait! There’s more. Aside from Soros, Lake’s story notes that the largest funder of J Street, which again claims to represent “mainstream American Jews,” lives in Hong Kong:

The [Soros] contributions represent a third of the group’s revenue from U.S. sources during the period. Nearly half of J Street’s revenue during the timeframe — a total of $811,697 — however, came from a single donor in Happy Valley, Hong Kong, named Consolacion Esdicul.

Marvin Olasky's colleagues and readers pitched in to help Jim Wallis overcome his spotty, overtaxed and emotionally susceptible memory. The Open Society Institute's tax returns show that it made three grants to Sojourners between 2004 and 2007, for a total of $325,000. Either Sojourners is drowning in money or Wallis is succumbing to dementia, because he says, fessing up, that the "OSI made up the tiniest fraction of Sojourners' funding during that decade--so small that I hadn't remembered them." The other possibility, that Wallis lies - not for a living, exactly - but when it appears convenient for the greater good of articulating the biblical call to social justice, is too far-fetched and cruel to entertain for as long as it takes to pose the thought.

If anyone gave me $325,000 in 3 years it would stick in my memory, and I have a notoriously bad memory. What's fascinating is that these Leftists realize that Soros money is tainted so they deny taking it, but they take it and then lie about taking it.

Christine O'Donnell lost her home because she's not worth bribing.

Michelle Malkin tells us how the pros do it:

Former senior senator from Delaware and current Vice President Joe Biden has a custom-built house in Delaware's ritziest Chateau Country neighborhood. It is now worth at least $2.5 million and is the Bidens' most valuable asset. Biden tapped campaign funds to pay for his compound's lawn needs. He secured the new estate with the help of a corporate executive who worked for Biden's top campaign donor, credit card giant MBNA.

In 1996, Biden sold his previous mansion to MBNA Vice Chairman John Cochran. The asking price was $1.2 million. Cochran forked over the full sum. Biden then paid $350,000 in cash to real estate developer Keith Stoltz for a 4.2-acre lakefront lot. Stoltz had paid that same amount five years earlier for the undeveloped property.

And this is just one case of "do as I say, not as I do." Then there's Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad and Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Obamas.

O'Donnell was just not sophisticated, or crooked enough. And the people handing out bribes did not consider her worth bribing.

"Funny, Greta, we are learning more about Christine O'Donnell and her college years and her teenage years and her financial dealings than anybody ever even bothered to ask about Barack Hussein Obama as a candidate and now as our president," Palin said.

Our initial reaction: There she goes again telling her wingnut lies! We determined we would debunk this poisonous claim. But guess what? It turns out Obama's middle name really is Hussein!

How do we know? It says so on his birth certificate--an image of which we found in a TalkingPointsMemo.com post from June 2008! Turns out it's TPM that's telling wingnut lies by implying the president's birth certificate isn't real. What a shame to see a once-respectable news site sink into the racist birther swamps.

Glenn Reynolds links to Stacy McCain who turns out a great column on his blog The Other McCain.

“We’re the girl you’ll take under the bleachers but you won’t be seen with in the light of day.”– Susan Madrak, Crooks and Liars

Never mind exactly why Madrak went off on David Axelrod during a conference call today. The point is that she’s right.

In order to win elections, Democrats have to pretend to share the values of the American middle class. They can’t afford to associate themselves too publicly with the grungy leftoids who are, in fact, the driving force behind the Democratic policy agenda.

I have no idea what inspired Ms. Madrak’s evocative metaphor

And this is great:

The whole point of calling this blog “The Other McCain,” after all, was to distinguish myself from that two-faced backstabbing weasel who got the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. (David Nolan for U.S. Senate!) And just today, Erick Erickson, Philip Klein and others panned the Republicans’ “Pledge to America.”

The conservative blogosphere staged an uprising when the GOP establishment tried to shove Charlie Crist down our throats, fought tooth and nail to defeat a sitting Republican senator in Alaska, and recently dumped the ”safe” Mike Castle in favor of Christine the Teenage Witch. We’re rather lose an election than to get screwed over by people who don’t respect us.

KLAVAN ON THE CULTURE’S GUIDE TO THE ELECTIONS: Part I, The Economy.

Petula Dvorak: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are the Mainstream

A seriously delusional woman writer for the Washington Post casts all you Glen Beck fans who gathered in the hundreds of thousands in Washington, and all you anti-IMF protestors into the same wastebasket. You are nuts, whack jobs and far fringe idiots who befuddle and scare the REAL Middle America, the sane Middle America: the people who watch Steve Colbert and Jon Stewart.

This writer and thousands of people like her, who were given access to word processors and newsprint once dominated the national conversation. Thanks to a benevolent God, they are now specimens in a zoo.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Over the last 20 months, between the actions and policies of the Obama administration and developments that have taken place as a result of same, the background has become very much foreground. The machinations and designs of the administration have carried more urgency, and their words have become shrill. Likewise, terms like "progressive" and "socialist" have increasingly been replaced with "Marxist," "communist" and "totalitarian" by their opposition.

Obviously, if only a few fringe types were employing such potent terminology, it could be easily dismissed. With hundreds of thousands of Americans mobilized, millions blogging and organizing, an emergent arm of the press dedicating itself to stifling the momentum of this government and even some conservative Hollywood celebrities coming "out of the arsenal" to join their voices with these, however, the gravity of these expressions cannot be ignored.

Make no mistake, these are not the mutterings of some far-out fringe. There are a large and growing number of people who agree totally but are not willing to admit it to pollsters.

Remember when the president said, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”? Not true. In Texas alone a record number of doctors are leaving the Medicare system because of the cuts in reimbursements forced on them by Obamacare! The president of the Texas Medical Association, Dr. Susan Bailey, warns that “the Medicare system is beginning to implode.”

Remember the Obama administration’s promise that Obamacare would cut a typical family’s premium “by up to $2500 a year”? Not true. In fact, fueled by reports that insurers expect premiums to rise by as much as 25 percent as a result of Obamacare, Senate Democrats are contemplating the introduction of price controls.

Remember when the president said in his address to Congress that “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions”? That turned out to be yet another one of those “You lie!” moments. We found out that Obamacare-mandated high risk insurance pools set up in states like Pennsylvania and New Mexico will fund abortions after all.

Remember the promise that Obamacare would “strengthen small businesses”? Not true either. The net result of Obamacare is that small businesses will face higher health care costs, new Medicare taxes, and higher regulation compliance costs, while the much-hyped health care tax credit for small businesses turns out to be almost impossible to obtain.

And she's just getting warmed up.

Remember all the Liberals and liberals suck-ups to told each other and us that Sarah Palin was not smart enough to be Vice President ... much less President? There are two words for you:: ASS HOLES!

She's eating your lunch and the lunch of your "anointed one," and his syncopants and his hired liars in the press and academia. As November elections approach what you smell is leftist fear, Liberals shitting their pants as the tsunami that took out a few RINO is now going take out a whole herd of Liberal shitheads who thought they could rule America because they were smarter, they could send a tingle up Chris Matthews leg, they had gone to HAAARVAAD and knew what the unwashed masses who shopped at Wal-Mart needed, even if they weren't smart enough to want it.

We’re going to clean up the Augean stables, throw out the corrupt thieves who thought they had a lifetime appointment because they were the right color or the right sexual orientation. And if they don’t get the boot in this election, there will be criminal charges filed for all the loot they have stolen, all the taxes unpaid, all the relatives enriched at the government trough.

Cartoons

As a one-off, 46-year-old example, Goldwater is like the Timothy McVeigh of conservative presidential candidates. But if Goldwater is going to keep being used as a boogeyman to scare conservatives, let's at least get the history straight.

Ironically, the elites also compared Reagan to Goldwater and predicted a devastating defeat for him in 1980. But Reagan didn't lose. He not only never lost an election, he never won by less than a landslide. (You might say Reagan's opponents suffered Goldwater-style defeats.)

So what was the difference between Goldwater and Reagan? Had the country changed that much in 16 years?

The social issues were the difference. Reagan agreed with Goldwater on fiscal and national defense issues, but by 1980, social issues loomed large and Reagan came down mightily on one side -- the opposite side as Goldwater, as it turned out.

Unlike abortion-loving Goldwater, Reagan said, "We cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide."

And unlike gay-marriage-loving Goldwater, Reagan said: "Society has always regarded marital love as a sacred expression of the bond between a man and a woman. It is the means by which families are created and society itself is extended into the future. ... We will resist the efforts of some to obtain government endorsement of homosexuality."

I preferred Goldwater to Johnson, but any time anyone tells you that social conservatives can't win but social liberals can, remember that Reagan won landslide victories while Goldwater lost in an equally big landslide.

In a dramatic development that could shake the political leadership of the Justice Department, career lawyer Christopher Coates has sent a letter to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights offering to testify Friday on matters related to the controversial New Black Panthers voter-intimidation case.

Two observations: (1) this is a brave man, (2) this matter may be more serious than many though if someone is willing to kill his career for it.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Two activists have exposed a disturbing phenomenon that they say is an open secret within the “peace camp”: female “peace” activists are routinely harassed and raped by the Arabs of Judea and Samaria with whom they have come to identify. They say the phenomenon has gotten worse lately and that many foreign women end up as wives of local Arabs against their will, but cannot escape their new homes.

Is this believable? It is. Here in the US, when asked to compare the mass deaths of Hitler, Stalin and Mao, the Liberals tell you that the Communist killers were not as bad as the Nazi killers, despite the greater death toll. The Communist deaths were "in the public good."

Mao and Stalin’s brutality and awfulness, but I still think that there is a significant difference between government action taken because the government *wants* to kill people, and government action taken where the government knows deaths will occur, but takes the action anyway because it believes the public good outweighs the deaths.

There are lots of people who are willing to lighten the burden of killing people via starvation, drowning or exposure (both Stalin & Mao) if it was done because the killers beleived they were serving the "public good."

In the lifetime of most of us, one man killed roughly 70 million of his fellow beings; and no, there was not a war going on.Ron Radosh:

We have known for some time that Mao Zedong, founder of the People’s Republic of China, was one of the last century’s most brutal and vicious mass murderers. In 2005, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s biography of Mao was published in this country to wide acclaim, and for the first time, many of the myths surrounding his rise to power and the nature of his rule after 1949 were brought to light. The authors estimated that Mao “was responsible for over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth-century leader.” My own discussion of their findings can be read here.

One period they covered was Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” his attempt to rapidly industrialize China in the five years between 1958 and 1962. Chang and Halliday had argued that not only did the program fail; it produced mass starvation, with areas of China resorting to cannibalism. Peasants and city dwellers alike were forced to build home steel furnaces, and all metal implements — including pots and pans used for cooking — were to be smelt, turning each home into a mini local steel producing factory. Mao also ordered that all sparrows be killed, since they ate grain. The “bourgeois” bird was condemned; the result was the upsetting of nature’s ecological balance, as pests and other birds once killed by sparrows began to attack crops. Before long, Mao was asking the Soviet Union to send them 200,000 sparrows from the Soviet Far East.

Mao had said: “Half of China may well have to die,” and he was prepared for such an outcome. It almost came true. Thirty-eight million people died of starvation and overwork during the Leap and the subsequent famine, which lasted for four long years. This greatest of 20th century manmade famines exceeded the deaths caused by Stalin’s collectivization of the Ukraine. As Mao told his staff, “50 million (might have to) die … you can’t blame me when people die.”

Behind a facade of capitalism, the Party controls every aspect of Chinese life, from who runs the schools to who runs Chinese companies.

Her beliefs make her what we once called normal, at least in flyover country. There are moms like her, and moms who strive to be like her without ever thinking of it that way and who might even scoff at the idea, on every street and in every neighborhood in America. They run our offices and schools, they run the local diners and band booster drives, and they get the family from Point A to Point B with military precision. Or they try their best to do all that, while trying to work out what they really believe about everything at the same time. Palin managed to do it, even to the point of running a state while going on oceanic fishing excursions with her husband while her political opponents buried her in expensive, frivolous accusations designed to drive her from office. She sent a son off to war. She’s dealt with a pregnant daughter, a worthless almost son-in-law, and a child with special needs. She’s us, pretty much, except that she also happens to have been nominated for the vice presidency and now commands a national following while also attracting a ferocious national opposition that includes most of the mainstream press. Her faith and her values have carried her through all the very high highs and the very low lows that life has thrown at her. The rest of us could only hope that we would handle the extremes of being Sarah Palin with half her grace.

Government and journalists cower at threats to cartoonist

These are questions worth asking. The answers are self-evident. The question is: why?

Last week, the Seattle Weekly announced that Molly Norris, its editorial cartoonist, had "gone ghost." Put another way, she went into hiding. The FBI told her she had to because otherwise it couldn't protect her against death threats from Muslims she'd angered. Earlier this year, Norris started "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" to protest radical Muslims' violently stifling freedom of speech and conscience. Incredibly, her plight has drawn precious little media attention, even though it is infinitely more newsworthy than, say, a fundamentalist preacher in Florida threatening to burn Qurans.

When The Examiner asked the American Society of News Editors for a statement on the issue, none was forthcoming. This despite the fact that the first sentence of ASNE's Web site describes its mission as supporting "the First Amendment at home and free speech around the world." We got a similar response from the Society of Professional Journalists, despite its dedication "to the perpetuation of the free press as the cornerstone of our nation and liberty."

Freedom of speech and press are in deep trouble when the American government thinks the best it can do to protect a journalist from death threats is to counsel her to go into hiding, and when the elite voices of American journalism can't be bothered to say anything in her defense.

What Wal-Mart knows about the economy.

Art Cashin passes along this tidbit about how the poor on welfare are coping with the recession. From the CEO of Wal-Mart:

I don't need to tell you that our customer remains challenged…You need not go farther than one of our stores on midnight at the end of the month. And it's real interesting to watch, about 11 p.m. customers start to come in and shop, fill their grocery basket with basic items – baby formula, milk, bread, eggs – and continue to shop and mill about the store until midnight when government electronic benefits cards get activated, and then the checkout starts and occurs. And our sales for those first few hours on the first of the month are substantially and significantly higher.

Help! I'm stuck in a time warp and can't get out.

There is a great feature in the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page daily written by James Taranto called “Best of the Web.” Among the miscellaneous subjects there’s always a reference to “old” news that seems to be coming around again. An example from yesterday (for you history buffs):

I once met a man who unburdened himself to me about his life. It became apparent that the highlight of his entire existence on this earth was high school. He was the captain of his high school football team and since those days the rest of his life had been a long slide into irrelevance. He literally cried as he told me this and I felt very, very sorry for him.

For some people an event in their past was the culmination of their existence. Everything in their lives revolves around that single moment, that season of glory or the injustice committed. The Hatfield and McCoys carried on a deadly feud after the original reason for their quarrel was long forgotten.

In the United States of America there are no slaves. There have not been any for about 150 years. But you can bet that 150 years from now, the great-great-great-great grandchildren of Roger Chesley will hold a slavery conference and tell us to address the slavery issue. Nothing is more important.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

"The Breakup"

The Recession's Over?

As a psychologist would say: "How does that make you feel?"

The NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) may have declared the recession over but there are more than a few doubts and questions. Consumer sentiment is not only 24 points below the level consistent with a growing economy, but it’s 7 points below levels normally seen in the middle of a recession.

If the NBER is right, this has been the longest recession – 18 months - since the Great Depression which lasted 43 months (August 1929 to March 1933).

Meanwhile 14.9 million workers are unemployed. And a shocking 41.2 million American receive food stamps. And let’s not forget about the ailing small business sector and a housing industry that’s flat on the canvas.

It may be possible for academic economists to say the recession ended last year, but the Federal Reserve is much less certain, stating today that it’s

“..prepared to provide additional accommodation if needed to support the economic recovery.”

That’s Fed Speak for “this economy’s in trouble but we don’t know what to do."

So, whatever, we're down in the ditch. Instead of thanking you for not totalling the car, the Republicans start up with their upperclassman bullshit. [applause]

You're like, "come on man, help push it out before the cops get here," and the Republicans are like, "I don't give a shit dude, it ain't my grandma's car." And then you remind them that they are the ones who are over 18 and will have to explain why they're in a car with minors and a trunk full of beer and weed and bashed mailboxes, and they're like, "Do we know you? Hey, we're just a couple of passing hitchhikers, man. We've never seen you guys before in our lives."

So instead of trying to argue further with these senior Republican assholes, __DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE__ and I roll up our sleeves, get down there in the muck, and start working to get the car up out of the ditch so we can get back before 7th period History. [applause]

Meanwhile __REPUBLICAN_CANDIDATE__ and his fat buddy are up there sucking on their Slurpees, laughing everytime I kill the motor because I've never driven a stick. Fuck you, Republicans. I hope you get a brain freeze from your goddamn Slurpees. [applause]

Segways for the military?

When the Democrats are becoming so incredibly desperate they accuse their opponents of being not just witches but unjailed criminals, Frank J. at IMAO tells us just how far out of favor Democrats are:

Democrats have almost brought things to the point of, “Yes, he’s a well known rapist, but look at his policy on spending.”

A commenter wrote:

I think they could run a Tax and Spend Liberal in DE against a Real Big Time Super Witch who IS FOR Masturbation and puts spells on High School boys to Masturbate 100 times a day minimum and the Witch would still win. It would be the Sore Weener Party!

Defying the boundaries of political absurdity, President Obama shed his Red coat yesterday and locked bayonets with Republicans in hopes of aligning himself with the anti-establishment Tea Party and its mantle of "Don't Tread on Me."

Calling the movement part of a "noble" American tradition, Obama whined that Tea Partiers have simply misidentified the real culprits in Washington.

It's those untax-and-spend Republicans, he insisted.

Not wise and frugal Democratic statesmen such as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and himself.

OBAMA now says he thinks skepticism of the federal govern ment is healthy.

And, suddenly, he says he now believes in a limited, fiscally conservative government.

And people say Glenn Beck is crazy?

Charles Hurt ends:

What's next?

Obama becomes one of those crazy "birthers" his administration used to spend so much time attacking?

But forget demanding to see his birth certificate or inquiring whether he was born in America.

"If I come as an immigrant, you have the obligation to make me a citizen." Those are the words from 58-year-old Zeituni Onyango of Kenya in a recent exclusive interview with WBZ-TV.

For two years Onyango said she lived in a homeless shelter, before she was assigned public housing despite thousands of legal residents also awaiting assistance. "I didn't take any advantage of the system. The system took advantage of me."

"I didn't ask for it; they gave it to me. Ask your system. I didn't create it or vote for it. Go and ask your system," she said unapologetically.

And she's right. The system provided her assistance despite her status as an illegal immigrant.

In 2004 a judge ordered Zeituni Onyango out of the country, but she never left. She stayed, hiding in plain site. In 2005 she attended her nephew's swearing in as the junior Senator of Illinois. In 2008 she was invited to, and traveled to D.C. for President Obama's inauguration.

Onyango hired a top immigration lawyer from Cleveland to help fight her case. We asked how she afforded that lawyer, when she claimed poverty.

"When you believe in Jesus Christ and almighty God, my help comes from heaven," she responded.

When asked about cutting in line ahead of those who have paid into the system she answered plainly, "I don't mind. You can take that house. I will be on the street with the homeless."

"To me America's dream became America's worst nightmare," she said adamantly. "I have been treated like public enemy number one."

She is still living in South Boston public housing, unemployed, and collecting about $700 a month in disability, she says. And now, Zeituni Onlyango is in this country legally.

In May 2010, Onyango's case went back before the same judge who ordered her out of the country in 2004. This time she was granted asylum in the United States. The ruling said a return to Kenya might put Onyango in danger.

Did her nephew, the President of the United States influence that immigration judge? "No influence at all, from nobody, from nowhere," Onyango said.

Do you know that I have the deed to the Brooklyn Bridge right here and I'm willing to sell it to pay for an operation. Any takers?

As audience members at a townhall-style meeting voiced exasperation and disappointment at his administration, and one woman said she was "exhausted" from defending him, Obama stressed he understood that people were frustrated.

I can imagnine an angry Barry yelling to his advance team: "Who let that woman in here?"

Coumo wants to get into a mud slinging match.

"If a guy says you have no cojones, how do you punch him back, call him an a--hole?" the Democratic gubernatorial candidate fumed in a secret talk to his team, one insider said.

"We have all this stuff [on Paladino] and we're on the defensive," Cuomo groused, the insider added....

The counterattack planning session came after Paladino issued a taunting letter that questioned Cuomo's manhood, ripped his pop's performance as governor - and taunted him to "for the first time in your life be aman."

Paladino challenged Cuomo to a debate immediately after his shocking GOP primary victory last Tuesday against party favorite Rick Lazio. Cuomo hasn't responded.

"It's difficult to understand why you, a polished veteran campaigner, scion of a political dynasty and king-designate, would fear a simple businessman from Buffalo, who candidly has never been in a debate in his life - except maybe in a bar," Paladino wrote.

Some of the country's most prominent health insurance companies have decided to stop offering new child-only plans, rather than comply with rules in the new health-care law that will require such plans to start accepting children with preexisting medical conditions after Sept. 23.

Germans, Nazis, Muslims

As has been pointed out, not every German was a Nazi. Indeed, the minority were nazis and most germans were probably decent humans. Yet Nazi Gemany tried to conquer all of Europe,sought to exterminate all Jews and Gypsies, enslaved many other and caused close to 40 million dead. Yet, I'm always and forever supposed to distinguish between the Islamists who want to kill me (really truly want me dead) and all those really good muslims who seem to be standing by watching.

It appears that Chris Coons is a nasty piece of work. Read all about it at Patterico's Pontifications.

Few things are more destructive to the integrity of a place than using the courts to harass activists and poor people. . . . Green Delaware [Muller's organization and web site] has often criticized New Castle County and things around it. This is easy to do. New Castle County has a long history of corruption and scumbaggery. We have often–but not any more!–testified at County Council meetings and suchlike. . .

But we also did something stupid in the circumstances: Bought a historic house threatened with demolition. This opened us up to unending harassment. . . . [T]hey charge us ten or twelve times for the same “offense,” and we are convicted for each “offense.”...

The county ordinance apparently allows bringing a separate charge every day. So the county could charge a person 365 times for having a cracked windowpane and then deliver these charges all at once, without prior notice, and demand a fine for each “violation.” A minimum fine of $100 is prescribed for each “violation” and “the court shall not suspend the sentence of any person …” Welcome to Delaware!

Abuse of code enforcement power has often been used to harass people. Since, obviously, every property has some technical code violation, anyone could be harassed. While the evil of Coons in abusing these laws is obvious, it is also obvious that the Delaware General Assembly has itself done a great evil by passing such laws for the County, and by failing to maintain the integrity of Delaware’s courts. ...

The Delaware media are blacked out on this story. It will be up to the Internet to get this scumbag some press.

The privilege log produced in the FOIA litigation contains stunning entries. They show regular discussions and deliberations between the highest political officials inside the DOJ, including the deputy attorney general and the associate attorney general, about what to do with the case. This contradicts numerous statements made to Congress, the Civil Rights Commission, and to the public.

Some of these statements were under oath.

Reading the logs, one is struck by the level of intimate involvement by the highest-ranking political officials at the DOJ. Frankly, the level of political coordination saddened me, especially given the countless statements to Congress and the public characterizing the decision as having been made only by civil servants.

For example, DOJ press spokesperson Tracy Schmaler has crowed about the Panther dismissal being made solely by career civil service attorneys, and the resulting controversy being nothing more than a “disagreement among career attorneys.” False. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez repeated the same mantra to the Civil Rights Commission. Again, not true.

When Justice Department officials deliberately misrepresent facts to the public and to Congress, there must be consequences....

Today was a very bad day for the Justice Department, but a worse day for our country. The privilege logs show what most Americans suspected all along: that the Department was lying, and the corrupt dismissal of the New Black Panther Case was made high up the political chain of command.

When someone destroys a bible, US government officials don’t line up to attack him. President Obama bowed lower than a fawning maitre d’ before the King of Saudi Arabia, a man whose regime destroys bibles as a matter of state policy, and a man whose depraved religious police forces schoolgirls fleeing from a burning building back into the flames to die because they’d committed the sin of trying to escape without wearing their head scarves. If you show a representation of Mohammed, European commissioners and foreign ministers line up to denounce you. If you show a representation of Jesus Christ immersed in your own urine, you get a government grant for producing a widely admired work of art. Likewise, if you write a play about Jesus having gay sex with Judas Iscariot.

So just to clarify the ground rules, if you insult Christ, the media report the issue as freedom of expression: A healthy society has to have bold, brave, transgressive artists willing to question and challenge our assumptions, etc. But, if it’s Mohammed, the issue is no longer freedom of expression but the need for "respect" and "sensitivity" toward Islam, and all those bold brave transgressive artists don’t have a thing to say about it.

And:

As I said in America Alone, multiculturalism seems to operate to the same even-handedness as the old Cold War joke in which the American tells the Soviet guy that "in my country everyone is free to criticize the President", and the Soviet guy replies, "Same here. In my country everyone is free to criticize your President." Under one-way multiculturalism, the Muslim world is free to revere Islam and belittle the west's inheritance, and, likewise, the western world is free to revere Islam and belittle the west’s inheritance. If one has to choose, on balance Islam’s loathing of other cultures seems psychologically less damaging than western liberals' loathing of their own.

On the election:

But a quick word on Christine O'Donnell, the GOP Senate candidate from Delaware whom the politico-media establishment have decided is this season's easiest conservative target. If I understand their current plan to save the Dems, it rests on the proposition that America is about to be delivered into the care of a coven of witches who want to take away your right to masturbate.

The Christine O’Donnell/Jimmy Carter Quiz

Who said each of the following quotes: Christine O’Donnell, or Jimmy Carter?

1. “To my amazement, I was besieged with questions about my sex life. At first I thought this was just a passing joke, but I was wrong. It became the dominant news story of my candidacy, and my popularity dropped precipitously. Any attempt to explain the Christian theology behind my answer only served to keep the issue alive.”

2. “I have an absolute, total commitment as a human being, as an American, as a religious person to Israel … Israel is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.”

3. “Feeling a bit presumptuous, I wrote to [an evolutionary scientist] diasagreeing with this premise and asserting that there were factors other than pure happenstance that influenced the course of evolution.”

4. “Because I’m just human and I’m tempted and Christ set some almost impossible standards for us. The Bible says, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ Christ said, ‘I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultery.’ I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times…. This is something that God recognizes, that I will do and have done, and God forgives me for it. But that doesn’t mean that I condemn someone who not only looks on a woman with lust but who leaves his wife and shacks up with somebody out of wedlock. Christ says, don’t consider yourself better than someone else because one guy screws a whole bunch of women while the other guy is loyal to his wife. The guy who’s loyal to his wife ought not to be condescending or proud because of the relative degree of sinfulness.”

5. “This set of principles, rooted in my Christian faith, has both shaped me and been shaped by my personal experiences, and it remains to this day a central element of my identity.”

6. (Quote from someone commenting about the candidate running for office) “It is not presumptuous to say, as there is enough evidence already, that a vast number of [O'Donnell or Carter] supporters consist of aggressive evangelicals whose main goal is to ‘Christianize’ our country; that is to say, to convert Americans to a particular brand of religious obscurantism. Needless to say, most, or many [O'Donnell/Carter]-fundamentalists despise complete intellectual and religious liberty.”

7. “Being born again is a new life, not of perfection but of striving, stretching, and searching — a life of intimacy with God through the Holy Spirit.”

8. “But if we aspire to grow as human beings, we should struggle to close the gap by making our inner selves truer reflections of our own highest values, which, for me, grow from my Christian faith.”

9. “…There are basic principles that, for me, have never changed. For a Christian, the life and teachings of Jesus offer a sound moral foundation that includes all the most basic elements that should guide us.”

10. “Yes, I have my personal beliefs, and these questions come from statements I made over fifteen years ago. I was in my twenties, and very excited and passionate about my new-found faith. But I assure you my faith has matured, and when I go to Washington, D.C., it’ll be the Constitution on which I base all of my decisions, not my personal beliefs.”

Obama's Legacy: The Tea Party Movement

I have commented a number of times that Barack Obama is the worst enemy of Liberalism and of my Black brothers and sisters. The country was being moved slowly and gradually to the Left by Liberals of both parties, but the lurch to the Left engineered by Team Obama, Pelosi and Reed created a backlash that will transform American politics for a generation. Race relations in this country had improved dramatically for a generation; qualified Black candidates held some of the highest offices in the land. We were ready for a Black president; but not this one: imperious, disdainful, an egomaniac and ever ready to play the race card.

A long time ago I came to the conclusion that one of the motives driving Obama is his concern over his legacy. How will he be seen once he leaves office? In particular, given that he’s the first President who isn’t white, what kind of record will he leave behind for the next non-white to make the attempt?

Will voters say, “Oh boy! This guy might be another Obama!” or will they say, “God help us, he might be another Obama”? Obama doesn’t want it to be the latter.

Unfortunately, it is increasingly looking as if that will be his legacy. The Obama administration is rapidly shaping up as a good bad-example. Obama has done nearly everything wrong that he possibly could do. Those that follow will learn from his example not what to do but rather what not to do....

Obama’s main legacy is going to be to utterly blacken the reputation of the “Progressive” political program for the next fifty years, if not even longer.

History will judge Obama’s biggest historical effect to be the backlash he will inspire against him among voters. His most important legacy will be the Tea Party movement, which wouldn’t have happened without him.

For decades, moderate Republican officeholders and party officials -- encouraged by experts in the liberal commentariat -- lectured conservatives that the GOP had to be a "big tent," that in order to win elections, that the party's candidates had to "move to the center." For that reason, defeated conservatives were supposed to support winning moderates, especially in liberal Northeastern states. Failing to do so was "divisive," according to the experts. There was indeed wisdom in the principle, as articulated in William F. Buckley's maxim that conservatives should vote "for the conservative most able to win," and in President Reagan's famous 11th commandment - "thou shalt not speak ill of any Republican."

But some of the nation's most prominent moderate Republicans are singing different tunes now, especially when Republican primary voters turn them out of office. Sen. Arlen Specter -- long a leading moderate GOPer -- switched parties when it became clear he would lose his primary race against former Rep. Pat Toomey. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist was touted as the clear favorite to win in the Senate GOP primary race. But when his standing in the polls dropped like a rock against the conservative choice, former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, Crist opted to run as an independent rather than accept the voters' decision. Similarly, Sen. Lisa Murkowski lost the Republican primary in her state to insurgent Tea Party candidate Joe Miller. Now she's planning to run as a write-in candidate. In Delaware, Rep. Mike Castle lost his Senate primary to Tea Partier Christine O'Donnell and now refuses to endorse her against Democrat Chris Coons.

Read more at the Washington Examiner

And, I should add, Karl Rove's creation of anti-O'Donnell talking points is another example.